Resumen de Awaking Interest in Science Learning: Hands-On Photosynthesis Demonstrations Using Elodea canadensis and Spinacia oleracea
M. Münkel Jiménez, M. Bonilla Araya, Ana D. Grey Pérez, O.A. Herrera-Sancho
Photosynthesis is a topic that every high school student must learn not only due to its importance to life on earth but because it inspires many other technologies nowadays. The objective is to illustrate hands-on learning activities to teach photosynthesis in an exciting and cost-effective way. It will improve their capacity to acquire the basic concepts as well as go deeper and increase their curiosity by being face to face with the different phenomena. The activity is divided into three experiments where the foci are chlorophyll extraction, plants’ oxygen production, and light’s intensity effect on photosynthesis. Each one lets the teacher introduce the basic concepts of photosynthesis and reinforce other chemistry practices and concepts. The activity took place in a Costa Rican high school with 15 10th grade students who worked in 3 groups of 5 students each. This one session activity is an integral approach to teach science with the overall purpose of awakening the interest of high school students in the subject through a low cost and versatile set of experiments that could be easily applied to any targeted audience. The collected data shows it achieved this goal.
